Stuff

We have already had two brief ComRes polls for the Indy and the BBC Daily Politics at the end of the week. ComRes found 59% thought the cuts “were unfair because they hit the poorest people”, but also (in the other poll) found a majority (52%) supporting the cuts with 39% opposed, a slightly more positive balance than the YouGov poll for the Sun. Neither had any voting intention figures.

The first Sunday poll to be published is by ICM for the News of the World. This has voting intention figures of CON 40%(+2), LAB 36%(+2), LDEM 16%(-2). Changes are from a fortnight ago. It’s the lowest Lib Dem and highest Conservatives scores from ICM since June (though it would be a very good Lib Dem score from any other pollster!).

On questions about the spending review itself people think the cuts were more unfair than fair by a narrow margin (45% to 42%), and 48% think people on low incomes will suffer the most, compared to 20% who think middle income earners will suffer most and 5% that high earners will. 60% agreed with the decision to protect the NHS, international development and schools from cuts (though we’ve seen in many pre-CSR poll that the public actually have mixed views on this – protecting the NHS is supported, International Development isn’t). On who would make the best Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne leads Alan Johnson by 38% to 28% – presumably there was a large body of don’t knows.

I’ll post again later when more polls appear, there is certainly the weekly YouGov poll for the Sunday Times to come, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there were others.

UPDATE: The YouGov/Sunday Times voting intention figures are CON 41%, LAB 40%, LDEM 10% – the same as YouGov’s immediate post-spending review poll for the Sun.

On who would make the best Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne leads Alan Johnson by 38% to 28% – presumably there was a large body of don’t knows.
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Osborne is chancellor & was shadow chancellor for how many years before taking office?

Alan Johnston is shadow & has been in the job for fortnight, after being given the role in a move that surprised the socks off most Labour watchers.

And the scores are only 38% to 28% in Osborne’s favour. Jeez Louise, Osborne will need to watch his back, if (when) the Conservative polling begins to drop below 36%. 8-)

It strikes me that the average of polls has to include a correction for frequency of various contributors. I cannot remember if AW does this. Otherwise the right hand list at the top would have a bias.

a little appropriate for me i been reading about the US mortgage crisis all day. it seems that the banks don’t have legal title to all those dodgy loans and lots of Americans “could” be about to get free homes, but the banks would be f*cked

Generally, the polls still show a modest Tory lead over Labour – and the spending review doesn’t seem to have fundamentally changed that configuration.

It looks likely that a consistent Labour poll lead will not be sustained until the cuts actually do start to bite on the ground.

As a Labour supporter, I’ve been reasonably encouraged by Ed Miliband’s performance as leader – he’s certainly exceeded my
expectations so far – though I still feel a little uneasy watching him at PMQs as Cameron is more fluent and EM comes across a bit stiff – rather like a Michael Dukakis (or even an IDS with hair).

Although we’ll probably see Labour leading throughout most of 2011, it still seems likely that the Tories will rally again before a 2015 General Election – especially if they can continue to sell the narrative that the cuts are the fault of the previous Labour Government (thus making the electorate fearful of the economic consequences of Labour returning to power).

I’ve seen plenty of headlines or assumptions that the poorest will be hit hardest by the ‘cuts’ – actually a rise in government spending in 2010-11 over 2009-10 – but haven’t seen any actual evidence. Perhaps I’ve been leading a sheltered life, but I can’t see anything that would particulaarly hurt the working poor. Benefit scroungers yes, but they can always get a job.

What’s this talk of a “budget bounce” for the Tories? I certainly had no expectation that announcing the hardest cuts in living memory would give them a “bounce”. We were all assuming there would be a Labour bounce. Now we are supposed to think the Tories should be worried that their cuts didn’t boost the ratings? Expectation management at it’s worst! And retrospective!

This site is not about what you opine, it’s about what the voters think. Have another look at what you just wrote. Is that what you think what the majority think? The polls say otherwise. Have a look at the the thread introductions.

There is good news for red and blue.
There is bad news for red and blue

1. Teflon Tories are ruggedly over 40%.
2. Reds minus policies command 10% more than May.
3. Barring events this might be as good as it gets for blue. When I say this, I mean a sorta 42/38/12, whcih i think is what it will settle down to be in the next week.
4. Red gain is coming from yellow, any recovery from yellow, will hurt us more.
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For 2015, this is finely poised. A 37/37/17 in May 2015, would be my half crazed guesstimate at this stage.

Without getting into the comparisons between non-stick and weatherproof surfaces, I’d venture it’s more “Ronseal Tories”
Does exactly what it says on the tin. They’ve said all along what they planned to do, they’ve now put more detail on the table, and arguments can rage about fairness, etc. – but no-one can be hugely surprised by the overall flavour of the CSR, some will think it’s better than expected, some worse, but the end result is pretty much “as we were”

@Hooded Man
I agree. In a way we can say the CSR just reinforced everyone’s expectations. Anti-government voters had their worst expectations reinforced, pro-government voters had their best expectations reinforced and LDs had NC patting GO on the back and having a go at the IFS.

Howard
“This site is not about what you opine, it’s about what the voters think”

Thank you so much for the advice. I obviously didn’t make my meaning clear enough. I’ll try to rephrase it in terms that more clearly link to the thread introduction.

Despite the high proportion of poll interviewees thinking that the so-called cuts hit those on low incomes hardest; having studied the announcements, I cannot see why this should be. One possibility that has just occurred to me is that most people consider themselves poor, so if they think that they will be affected at all, they may assume that they are worst hit.

As for the purpose of the site, I understood that it was to discuss aspects of polling, which I was doing, and not necessarily just engaging in pointless suppositions about what the poll percentages might be at some random time in the future. However, I am open to correctoon on this (by Anthony, not you).

I think the crunch will come when banker & CEO bonuses are announced by a mischievous media; if they make a sharp contrast to the frozen or reduced income that the average family has, there will be a resurgence of the anger that was so fatal to Labour’s GE campaign.

The Conservatives think that ‘bonus envy’ is all in the past; I think it probably isn’t. 8-)